ABSTRACT
Implicit censorship describes a practice whereby editors and publishers subtly circumvent, constrain and/or excise text and titles that communicate material considered legally, politically, religiously or culturally problematic. Focussing on a legally challenged text, this paper provides a comparative analysis of the 2013 US and 2016 UK editions of Lawrence Wright’s Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood and the Prison of Belief through the lens of defamation law and highlights a spectrum of editorial alterations imposed to mitigate libel. In doing so, the paper asks: to what degree does the editorial mediation of trade non-fiction texts reinforce or subvert the dominance of defamation law frameworks in contemporary publishing? A quantitative measurement of alterations suggests that despite legal reform, publishing professionals working within historically strict defamation-law frameworks (such as the UK and Australia) continue to employ avoidance strategies, with consequences for authorial freedom of expression and readers’ possible access to public-interest content.
Katherine Day, Censorship v the public interest: measuring the extent and impact of editorial mediation in trade book publishing, Journal of Media Law. Published online: 30 May 2026.
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